This post is about binge drinking and ways to stop it. If you are happy with your binge drinking habits, it isn’t really aimed at you. The last thing I want to do is try and preach at people. Feel free to read it for entertainment purposes and share it with your drinking buddies, but also feel free to take it with a grain of salt. If you are binge drinking on a regular basis, or know someone who is, and are looking to make a positive change, the thoughts and insights in here may prove useful. I encourage you to read it with an open mind and share with anyone you think might benefit from it. – Chris
I watched an interesting tv show earlier today about deciding wether or not to continue a life of casual sex and binge drinking. (Viewers in the UK can follow the link and watch the show on BBC’s iPlayer) The emphasis was on binge drinking. It made me a bit angry and very frustrated. The poor girl was being guided by a mother who she didn’t respect (this was clear from the show) and a grandmother who didn’t have a clue what modern culture is about. Understandably the girl was angry and confrontational. I would be too. If someone forced me to change something I enjoyed doing but had zero authority in my view, I’d probably ignore them, or lash out. If it’s your mother you can’t just do that. Beware religious leaders, you have no authority over me.
Whilst it is clear to me that binge drinking is not a good way to pass my time, there are plenty of people in the UK who don’t have the same view. Drinking to excess, binge drinking, where someone consumes far more alcohol than the recommended daily intake by the UK government, is a growing trend in young people. Much has been said about how binge drinking can be stopped, or made less of a ‘problem’. Much has been said, but nothing has been done. People have been talking a lot but not actually saying anything worth listening to. The following are my thoughts as a former binge drinker on how I changed my destructive binge drinking habit and some insights on how others may be able to follow my footsteps. Realizing that going out and partying sober is so much more fun than drinking your body weight in beer over the course of a weekend is very empowering.
Destructive Behavior And Individual Morality
So, what’re my awesome insights that will revolutionize the drinking culture of British youths? I hinted at what I believe the biggest deal is in the first paragraph. It is respect. Not respect for your parents, your friends or the police, but respect for yourself. Respect covers so many aspects of your life. It means taking a look at yourself in the mirror and knowing, without any doubt, that you are strong, powerful individual. Knowing that you and only you are in control of every aspect of your life and that you assume responsibility for it. Knowing that what’s best for you will, ultimately, be best for humanity in general. By being proud of where you have come from but only bothering yourself with the future. Once you make a conscious decision to respect yourself, all kinds of good things can happen to you.
In one of my earlier posts, How To Live Well, I talked about finding your moral code and living to it. A code is something intrinsic to an individual, it may change over time but it is something that is discovered. You cannot define your moral code, it is one of the defining points of you. It is so important for an individual to develop the ability to discover their own moral code and to constantly evaluate it. Living outside of your moral code will at best make you feel uninspired or unmotivated to do what you need to do on a day to day basis. At worst, it can lead to self destructive behavior or behavior destructive to those around you. For me, the worst possible case is living by someone else’s moral code which has no real bearing on your own, especially if it has been forced on you by someone you have little to no respect for. How to develop a coherent moral code is beyond what I want to write here. I will no doubt cover this at a future date, but until now imagination of what would you would have to do to get your perfect life might be a good start.
I believe that one of the reasons so many young adults in the UK decide to binge drink is because they have low self respect or self value. This leads directly to disillusion with the world and potentially even depression. Someone who believes they have nothing to lose is a formidable opponent. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone, some people are incredibly happy with their life. Unfortunately, I believe a lot of people are kidding themselves too.
I think a considerably bigger problem, and the one that is at the heart of all the problems with young adults at the moment, is that they are living by someone else’s set of morals. Perhaps a parent, or a friend or a celebrity but not their own. It doesn’t matter who’s code it is but if it isn’t in line with theirs, there will be problems. There’s no reason not to take certain aspects of other peoples’ codes and combine them to form your own, that’s what role models are for, but whatever you decide to live by should be uniquely yours.
Imagine being forced into living by a grandmother’s set of codes. Her life may have no bearing on the life of a modern youth (or she may be a cool granny). Forcing that set of beliefs, attitudes and values onto a modern teenager is not going to end well. Neither understands the other’s way of life and neither person’s life has any relevance to the others’. This isn’t a failing on the grandmother’s part, or the child’s either. It is a simple fact of life. She is simply doing what she thinks is the best. She wants her grandchild to be happy so tries to get the child to do what would have made her happy. At the most basic level, she should be commended for wanting the best for the child. Unfortunately, her actions may be more destructive than she realizes. Times change, the only permanent thing is impermanence.
If you can fix the second problem, making sure you live by your code, you will probably fix the first problem in the same breath.
Reasons To Give Up Alcohol
I don’t want to sit here and preach the standard health stuff. The damage that binge drinking can do. It’s well documented and I won’t bore you with the details. I’m not into shock tactics that build up emotions and lead to meaningless, fake breakthroughs either. I am genuinely trying to help people. Here are some observations that I noticed once I cut down my drinking to below the government guidelines.
Firstly, more energy. I’d often go out at around 10pm to the bars and clubs and drink, heavily. One might even say “binge drinking”. This would be great until around midnight or 1am. After this sort of time, the sugar in the drinks was starting to wear off, I was absolutely wasted and didn’t have any money left either. All I was interested in then was going home! Kind of lame really. There are exceptions to this rule, sometimes a drunken lads night out is very good fun, but when this is 3 or 4 times a week, it gets tired pretty quickly.
Higher productivity. Even a little alcohol can affect your productivity. Just not being bothered to respond to an email quickly or finish writing an essay that day don’t sound like big deals, compound them over a year and you have a problem. Magnify it with a seriously heavy binge drinking lifestyle, you have a serious problem. Add this to things like not really wanting to go to the gym, or not working out for as long or as hard when you get there or injuring yourself due to carelessness… I’m sure you see where this is going. You can pack more into an alcohol free life and enjoy it all even more.
Covering up other, bigger issues in your life. Drinking alcohol, or taking any drug for that matter, says to me that I am not completely happy at the moment and need something to make me feel the way I want to. These issues can be linked to the moral code points I talked about before. In the long run, it’s best to face these problems head on and fix them as quickly as possible, rather than covering it all up with a cocktail of chemicals that give you the fake feeling of happiness. It may be more difficult but letting these bad feelings grow within you can only lead to bad things. At the start of the post I said that it was important to know that what was in your best interest is in the best interest of humanity in the long run. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. (Extreme example I know, but imagine if this guy had spent a bit of time trying to become truly happy with himself and his life…)
Conscious actions. It is far easier to make good decisions if you are sober, or not too drunk. Having a clear and well defined code helps you make the right decision. Remember, there’s no rule in the code about not dancing, being obnoxious and generally having a good time in a club. (There’s no rule in forming the code that says you can’t identify yourself as a binge drinker either for that matter) It’s better to do it as your own decision rather than the alcohol’s though. It helps when you have to look your friends in the eye the next day. If they think what you did was dumb, you have no excuse. If they thought you being genuine to yourself was dumb, fuck ‘em. This takes courage, but everything I have talked about here takes courage. Real courage. You’ve got courage, right?
Better with women. Women don’t like a guy who’s drooling all over her shoulder. This is a fact backed up by my own (and others’) empirical evidence. Worried about confidence? Look at the third and fourth paragraphs here. Also, try checking out this blog post too.
Advice?
So you’ve got here. Perhaps you are looking for some advice. Here’s my wisdom, condensed into small, bite size chunks of text on a website. To young adults, discover your moral code and live to it. Don’t be forced into someone else’s code but don’t feel bad about borrowing from others’ codes either. If you still want to binge drink, then go for it. I think if you take the time to be really introspective and evaluate your life clearly and consciously, you might not want to binge though.
To parents, encourage your children to discover their code. Don’t try and force them to, it is something everyone needs to do for themselves. DO NOT FORCE YOUR CODE ON YOUR CHILDREN. I believe this is the number one reason for destructive behavior such as binge drinking and other substance abuse in the UK. If you don’t understand your child’s code, it’s not necessarily a reflection on you, just a fact of life. It’s not personal. I share very few elements of my parents’ codes.
There is a common saying that arguing with a fanatic will only reinforce their own belief. I’ve seen this happen on more than one occasion. I believe that people need to find their own answers themselves. Guided discovery or gentle hinting is much better than shouting and arguing. Arguing only makes people put up their own defenses and ultimately will get you nowhere. If you know someone who might have an issue, you could always direct them here so they can make their own discovery.
Shock tactics are a bad idea too. Building up someone’s emotions to breaking point and then pushing them over with this kind of tactic leads to false breakthroughs. False breakthroughs are where someone feels a rush of emotion for a short period of time. Ultimately the emotion is driven by the skill of the author or speaker rather than a genuine desire to change. This leads to people feeling buzzed about what they heard for a short time but can never make any real change in their life. The reason? They haven’t really made the conscious decision to change, they’ve just been tricked by good showmanship. I thought this was incredibly clear on the TV show I mentioned above.
Epilogue
How did my life change after I decided to stop binge drinking? I had a lot more fun. I was significantly more productive and I have achieved all of my goals I have set for myself since making that decision. Do I still drink? From time to time, yes. I rarely have more than 4 drinks in a day. When I do, I certainly feel it the next day though! I try to drink water with my alcohol too. It can certainly take the edge off.
A sample day for me when not drinking might look something like this. Get up for work at 9am. Hit the gym after work or during a break, finish work, get home and take a nap. Make some food, eat it and meet up with some mates for a night out, sans alcohol. Sleep at maybe 2 or 3am, but good sleep. Not fitful spurts of an alcohol induced coma. It’s amazing what you can do without alcohol dragging you back at every stage.
